Chennai: The Madras High Court on Tuesday reserved its orders on the maintainability of a public interest writ petition challenging the organisational polls for the posts of Co-ordinator and Joint Co-ordinator of the AIADMK party, originally scheduled to be held today (December 7).
Incumbents O Panneerselvam and K Palaniswami were on Monday declared elected unopposed as party Coordinator and Joint Coordinator respectively, the top two posts that together constitute the AIADMK's apex leadership.
On Tuesday, the first bench of Acting Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice P D Audikesavalu reserved its orders, without mentioning the date, after wondering as to why the petitioner had included the Election Commission of India as a party-respondent in the case.
Unless the relevance and role of the ECI is established, the petition would be treated as not maintainable, the bench added.
Read: OPS, EPS elected unopposed as AIADMK coordinator and joint coordinator
In his petition, J Jayachandran of Arsanapatti in Hosur, who was allegedly manhandled when he went to the party headquarters in Royapettah to obtain nomination papers to contest in the elections on December 4, cited the ECI as the first respondent.
He contended the mandatory notice of a clear 21 days from the date of announcement of election and the date of polling, was not issued. The election officers -- C Ponnaiyan and Pollachi V Jayaraman -- nominated by the party high command, were acting whimsically.
The voters list, consisting of nearly 1.50 crore cadres, was not made public. The entire proceedings were conducted in such a way as to ensure that only Panneerselvam and Palaniswami filed their nominations for the said posts, he alleged.
He prayed for a direction to the ECI not to affix its seal of approval for the election of the duo. His interim prayer to restrain the two election officers from announcing the results, has become infructuous with the declaration of the same on Monday itself.
PTI
